Peter Mendelsund has designed more than a thousand book covers, from “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” to editions of James Joyce, Franz Kafka, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. As well, Mendelsund is the creative director of The Atlantic magazine, an author of both fiction and nonfiction, and a classically trained pianist.
But until the pandemic, he had never painted.
During lockdown, Mendelsund was consumed by a deep and paralyzing depression. The only things that seemed to get him out of bed were journaling about his illness and putting brush to canvas. The result is “Exhibitionist: 1 Journal, 1 Depression, 100 Paintings.”
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Meanwhile, the multi-talented creator has emerged from this darkest period and produced another book: His third novel, “Weepers,” tells the story of Ed, a cowboy poet living in the Southwest in an America even more benumbed than the real thing. Ed is part of the 302, a union of Weepers, the gifted few who are hired to evoke the necessary emotions at funerals and other events. When a young man dubbed “The Kid” shows up, the newcomer doesn’t shed a tear, yet provokes much deeper reactions, for better and then for worse. Mendelsund spoke recently by video from his Manhattan apartment, which is filled with books on the shelves and floor, including many he’s designed and others that he finds too beautiful to part with.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q. Were you conscious of how the two books pair with each other?
“Exhibitionist” was put together after the novel as an afterthought. Once it was done, I could see all of the connections, but it wasn’t on purpose.
Obviously, they’re both books about sadness, estrangement, and wondering how one contends with the modern world and where the sense of hope comes from.
They also speak to each other directly about the legacy of harrowing father figures. And Ed, the narrator, is very interested in words, and one preoccupation in the journal is words and how you communicate properly what one feels when one is in despair.
Q. Ed has a distinctive narrative voice in “Weepers.” You have a different one in “Exhibitionist,” but that was written while you were suffering terribly. Which is closer to your authentic voice?
The voice in “Weepers” is not me. Some of the humor is me, and I’m interested in weird sentences like him, and his high-low thing – he’ll go off on a metaphysical tangent and then think of something so stupid and then end on a quip – is also very much me.
But really, the journal is my voice, with my brain not being able to turn itself off. There were points where I was spending more time editing it than writing it because my voice is one that just keeps piling voices on top of itself.
Maybe the bipolarity has something to do with that, but there is this sense that I’m looking at myself constantly – whether it’s trying to heal myself or wondering how I got in this quandary or how each sentence is informed by the history of it all. Part of healing for me has been to shut up and let my mind just be a single mind.
Q. What about finding your voice as a painter?
I don’t even know if I found it, but it was purely my desire to maintain ignorance and ineptitude as deeply and as long as possible. Growing up playing the piano with intense rigor and discipline, you develop technique and there’s so much work involved, so there ends up being this tremendous anxiety. With the painting, I thought, “I’m going to just let this happen.” Now I see that what I wanted to say visually, ironically, was something about the impossibility of language.
Q. “Weepers” is about the perils of feeling strong emotions in a deadened society. Were you thinking of the big picture, or did you start out writing about your own emotional states and broaden the scope?
At my worst, there was utter loneliness and anhedonia. That’s when I started thinking about numbness, and very quickly I started to think about the country and how it’s partnered at this moment with anger. It’s a particularly crappy moment to be living through, and I see a certain amount of either numbness or anesthesia and the other side of that is rage and vitriol.
Q. Ed clearly favors feeling things fully, even though he suffers for it. Do you think we need some level of denial to get through the day?
Ignoring things sometimes is definitely the healthy thing to do. I recognize now that I really do have to moderate my news consumption, which is hard working at The Atlantic. It could ruin my life very easily. Everybody has a different threshold. I’ve been through the depression ringer. So I really moderate what I take in.
Q. Ed’s ex was a Weeper but left the job, and him, after she started getting treated with medications. How do you feel about that way of managing those emotions?
When I first started taking medication, I was very ashamed, but now I can talk about it freely. For Ed, it felt like a betrayal because they shared this sensitivity and sorrow, and when she got better, it felt like he was being left behind. But when he sees the depths of deprivation that The Kid brings out, he starts to realize the value of not going too deep.
Q. The Kid has this magic touch in stirring emotion, but when he does, everything escalates and goes awry. Did you know all along that would happen?
I was thinking it would just be a miracle if somehow somebody could understand where I am and meet me there. That’s where he sprung out of. But seeing the general state of things, I also thought, “People really need to get back to compassion. By what miracle could it happen that human beings could try or at least be inclined to wear the shoes of another and feel compassion?”
I think it would take a miracle. And that suited itself to a Messianic narrative, so the story follows that arc pretty closely: how dangerous is somebody who can get to the impulses of whatever hurt begat this desperation, alienation, confusion or whatever that comes from this poisoned wellspring of anger. But people don’t want to get there.
When someone dies, so often there’s a fight afterwards, over money or something else. It’s easier to feel anger than it is to feel grief. I feel like it’s my mission in life to keep preaching about that. When my mom died, I lay on the floor and I wept. And you know what? It was so healthy. You get it out, you work through it, you continue to feel the loss. But it’s honest.
Q. Are you painting or writing more?
Right now, I’m just feeling kind of placid. I still have a great job, but I just kind of want to be. I’m doing really well emotionally, the best I’ve been in as long as I can remember. I wake up and I don’t feel anxious. I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel the urge to damage myself in any way.
I can see for the first time a glimpse of what it would look like to pass some time where I’m, I don’t want to say happy, but I’m OK.
I want to watch some sports and stream stuff and cook some food and take a walk. I’m just doing good, and I’m living. A very boring life, and I think that’s OK, right?